Podcast Transcript
Last week we looked at time, and it seems wholly appropriate to move on to arrows, especially since I spent most of the weekend reading and trying to understand Carlo Rovelli’s mind-blowing book “The Order of Time”.
Be warned: this book will collapse all your current ideas about time and reality - and I’m only halfway through so I can’t yet say what they’ll be replaced with…but it is definitely a thrilling ride.
Time’s arrow is the (if I’m correct, as yet unproven) conjecture that time isn’t symmetrical; that you can only go in one direction.
Well this week we’re going to focus on what has become a widely accepted symbol of direction: the arrow.
Although maybe not quite as enigmatic as time, there is plenty to uncover when it comes to arrows.
As an object, they are ancient. The oldest found stone-tipped projectiles date back to c. 64,000 years ago.
As a symbol, they are surprisingly young. Other than a fascinating article by Robert Finkel, I haven’t been able to find much on the history of arrows as directional devices (if you know more, do let me know), but it seems they were first introduced in print in the 18th century.
Isn’t that astonishing? If you’d have dropped me off at some Roman ruins and told me to look for arrow signs I would have happily obliged - but apparently there aren’t any. Romans used images of hand or feet to indicate directions.
What seems perfectly natural and obvious to us, to indicate direction using an arrow, was, back then, a brand new idea.
Those first arrows in print by the way still had their fletching, but lost them in the 19th century.
And nowadays we don’t even need a shaft anymore: a simple triangle suffices to give us a sense of direction.
I went on a quick arrow-quest in my local area and found lots of arrows. They are so ‘normal’ that we hardly notice them. We simply do as we’re told whenever a directional triangle appears.
The arrow - once a moving object itself - now moves multitudes in the proper directions at airports, in and around football stadiums, on very busy roads.
I’ll be looking at arrows all this week, in art as well as in daily life, and I suggest you do the same.
How many arrows do you encounter during the day? And what do they make you do?
I’d love to see what arrows look like in your part of the world - so do share them using the hashtag #kramerseye on instagram.
Enjoy your arrow-hunting, and I’ll be back tomorrow, with more on arrows and 15th century skimpy underwear